The B-Masters Cabal

Vampire Circus
Mitterhaus is absolutely ludicrous. He’s like a spoof vampire played by a drag queen in a disco musical written, directed, starring, and only seen by the world’s most flamboyant drag queens, and then at the end they all agree that the play was good but Mitterhaus was a little too campy for them. When you’re too campy for a theater full of drag queens, you are definitely too campy for a Hammer film, especially one that is otherwise so weird and serious. Not that Mitterhaus doesn’t have his strong suits as a character. For one, he lives in a cool castle populated by a couple sexy naked orgy women. He has lovely taste is sashes. And the fact that he’s kidnapped and lured a little girl into his sleazy lair gives the character an air of scummy, almost pedophiliac menace that really makes him a villain. You could always root for Dracula, even when he was at his worst and whipping Dr. Who with steel switches, but Mitterhaus just gives off a creepy uncle vibe.

“I’ll show you some mesmerism, you Mormon bastard! YOU WILL GIVE US BACK OUR WOMEN! OUR WOMEN!”

I finally catch up with the first epic chapter in the career of my favorite cinematic supervillain, and find the man who would be Mabuse. Disguises, cons, seduction, murder, mayhem, and a lot more murder in Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. It’s all part of this month’s B-Masters Roundtable.

Continuing the theme of silent films about religion,though with a sad lack of mesmerism:

The Godless Girl
Cecil B. DeMille’s final silent film, The Godless Girl, had the misfortune of being released in the shadow of The Jazz Singer, making it a casualty of the rapid shift in public tastes from pictures that didn’t talk to those that did. As a result, it became something of a footnote in DeMille’s career, which is a shame. For people, like myself, who entertain a fairly narrow conception of the director based on his association with Bible-thumpers like King of Kings and The Ten Commandments, viewing it can be an eye-opening experience — because even though it is, in part, concerned with the spread of atheism among the young people of its day, it doesn’t quite come down on that topic in the way you might expect.

The late Anthony Perkins was best known as an actor, but did you know that he worked behind the camera several times? One of those times was when he directed the black comedy LUCKY STIFF, from a screenplay created by comedy writer Pat Proft (THE NAKED GUN). Did Perkins get lucky? Check it out!

Say what you will about the melodramatic propaganda film Trapped By the Mormons (1922), you can’t exactly call it subtle.  You also can’t call it good, either.  But some these days call it hysterical.  Me?  I call it silent, which is why I’m reviewing it now!

Not to be confused with any contributions to the silent film roundtable:

THE SILENT STAR
Who’d have thought, back in the 1960s, that our nation’s youngsters were being fed communist propaganda by one of the most mercenary elements within the American film industry? Well, a lot of people, probably. It was a pretty paranoid time. Still, had they known, those people could have at least taken comfort in the fact that it was being done out of only the most purely capitalistic motives. After all, Eastern Bloc science fiction movies presented an irresistible lure to B movie producers like Roger Corman and his ilk. Being that they served as representations of the bright, technologically-advanced future achievable through socialism, these films were often the beneficiaries of relatively lavish government funding, and, as a result, boasted special effects and production design that were well beyond what makers of American sci-fi cheapies could afford.

A new side-project from me, and one which should arouse the interest of many here: Arkham Tales, a new free PDF magazine of weird fiction. We’re projecting the first quarterly issue in November, and submissions (for which WE WILL PAY) are eagerly sought. Check out writer’s and artist’s submission guidelines, and advertiser rates and info, at http://www.arkhamtales.com.

That’s right, I like to shake things up every now and again. So tonight, two months before my annual Month of the Living Dead, I’m looking at Retardead (2008). I could try to entice you with tidbits of plot cleverness, but instead I shall simply say: “From the producers/writers/director/stars of Monsturd.” What other recommendation do you need?

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion
You might think that the women-in-prison genre is so rigid in its conventions that it wouldn’t allow room for much experimentation, but leave it to the Japanese to prove that assumption wrong. The first three films in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series, all of which were directed by Shunya Ito, stand out for me as the pinnacle of artistically-rendered 1970s Japanese exploitation. Each film is stuffed full of surrealist imagery, imaginative compositions and breathtaking visual lyricism. Of course, being that they are women-in-prison films, they are also stuffed full of shower scenes, lesbianism and graphic violence.